Optimal Powered Aerogravity-Assist Trajectories

Using low Lift-to-Drag spacecraft to perform upper atmospheric Aero-Gravity Assisted Maneuvers

“…The results show a significant improvement with respect to the GAM, in terms of energy changes and turn angle, when the AGAM and/or the PAGAM are applied at upper atmospheric flight, which are feasible maneuvers. The effects reported here, are lower than the ones presented by Armellin et al (2006); Qi and Ruiter (2021), implemented optimal control to the maneuvers applied at Mars, but at the lowest altitudes (below 60 km), which include the limitations described in section 2.1.…”

“…If the propulsion system is implemented during an AGAM, the trajectory is defined as a Powered Aero-gravity Assisted Maneuver (PAGAM). The PAGAM combines the advantages of using Lift to increase the effects of the GAM and the implementation of propulsive forces to reduce the losses due to Drag, or to maintain the spacecraft altitude in the atmospheric flight, searching to increase the curvature angle (Mazzaracchio, 2015;Qi and Ruiter 2021). There are few references from the scientific literature which explored these maneuvers, as presented by: Lewis and McRonald, (1991); Murcia and Prado (2021);Prado, (1996); Prado and Broucke, (1995).…”

“…Initially, the PGAM was designed for non-continuum impulses (single or multiple instantaneous burns), but it is also possible to implement continuum thrust, as was presented by Qi and Ruiter (2020), showing an increase in curvature and larger variations of energy compared to the GAM. Detailed surveys of the GAM, PGAM, AGAM and Powered Aero-gravity Assisted Maneuver (PAGAM) were presented by Ferreira et al (2021); Qi and Ruiter (2021).…”

Design of Flyby Trajectories with Powered Gravity and Aerogravity Assist Maneuvers

“…They defined this flyby process as the powered aerogravity-assist (PAGA). Qi and de Ruiter [16] analyzed PAGA trajectories by assuming that continuous thrusts are conducted in atmospheric flight. Numerical results indicated that PAGA orbits can achieve an even larger velocity or energy change than AGA orbits.…”

“…Different from the simple two-body model used for PAGA maneuvers in Ref. [16], a more accurate Sun-planetary ERTBP model is adopted in this paper to depict orbital characters during the planetary flyby. Furthermore, we will design different AGA portions by lift modulation, and the results of PGA+AGA orbits for different periapsis epochs are analyzed and compared.…”